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Field Highlight: Comfort in Liberia

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| Apr 27, 2014

Comfort is the name of a midwife for the village of Blueberry Mission near Panama clinic in Sinoe. She was trained by Medical Teams International to recognize danger signs during pregnancy and to encourage women to deliver in the nearest clinic. This February, nurses all over Liberia went on strike because of salary issues. In Liberia they call this a “go slow”. The midwives, on the other hand, are volunteers, so they were not involved in the “go slow”. During the strike, Comfort noticed a pregnant woman with some of the danger signs she had been trained by MTI to look for. She brought the pregnant woman to the clinic in Panama using a wheel barrow for transport because they lived far from the main road. When they arrived they found the clinic closed. Comfort went to the home of the nurse. In spite of the strike, she begged the nurse to come and help this woman from her village. The nurse finally agreed. In the end, Comfort was true to her name, comforting the new mother after she delivered a healthy baby girl.

MTI’s Sinoe County Liberia Safe Motherhood Project started in 2013. The focus of the project is to work with traditional midwifes in each village. The project focuses on pregnant women and children under five years old.

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